Overcoming Bias comment

I guess my original comment was too long or something because typepad wouldn’t accept it. I am going to host it here. It will not make much sense if you haven’t been reading the thread, so regular readers might want to skip this one.

I think recent Republican presidents have all presided over increases in the size of government, but the rate of growth just wasn’t as fast as under Democrats. Bush Jr was an exception who was more like LBJ. Obama is projected to similarly increase the size of government, but Bruce Bartlett has argued that Bush is still to blame for much of the growth Obama will preside over. Although many libertarians were not fans of it, Bush’s plan for private accounts for social security was associated more with libertarians than any other group. It crashed and burned, but that he was willing to touch the third-rail signified something. Immigration is another area where Bush & McCain took political risks (here at the hands of their socially conservative base) for a policy libertarians are among the most fond of. Steven Teles’ “Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement” distinguishes between the “business wing” of the Republican party (which often favors government intervention in its favor) and ideological libertarians. Where the GOP throws a bone to the libertarians, they are probably blowing dog whistles for a more important group than libertarians.

Speaking of Haidt, he and Wilkinson were at a talk where they discussed Arthur Brooks work on happiness and Haidt mentioned that one group had been left out of the analysis so far: authoritarians. His suspicion is that they would be less happy than conservatives (the happiest group) and liberals or libertarians (who are like a more extreme version of liberals). The Audacious Epigone has some demographic data here on self-described conservative Democrats, which he thinks might be considered “anti-libertarians” ideologically.

I think people tend to lump national security/foreign policy in with social policy. Mitt Romney explicitly discussed the “three legs of the stool” of conservatism. It might be the odd man out in that it is really elites who are most concerned with it, while the general public focuses more on domestic policy. If we disaggregate social and economic views (even though a one-dimensional view of politics does quite a good job in predicting views) than I think the third leg can also be considered orthogonal. Many righties who are not socially conservative favored the Iraq war (Brink Lindsey, Glenn Reynolds, Megan McArdle, Andrew Sullivan & Daniel Drezner have all applied the libertarian moniker to themselves and that’s not even including the rather cosmopolitan neoconservatives). Paleoconservative isolationist opponents are often quite socially conservative (enough so that they are alienated from the rest of society). The proponents of “national greatness conservatism” (with John McCain as their emblem) wanted to explicitly repudiate small government in favor of a more selfless and nationalistic communitarianism. Then there are the “liberal hawks” (though I think most of them are on the economic right wing of the left). The radicals among lefties and libertarians tended to oppose the war. I suppose I might be focusing too much on one incident, but I’m only 22 and so it occupies a large chunk of my mind-share where Vietnam might for my elders.

While it’s probably off-topic, I’d like to reply to Wiblin. In my view it’s a mistake to ask about “being oneself” or “authentic” as oppose to molded by society. Marxists used to claim that the proletariat had developed false consciousness under capitalism in order to explain why they had not developed class consciousness and thrown off their chains. Because they believed everyone outside of communism was oppressed (odd as that sounds to us) they regarded communist takeovers as “liberation”. My take is that “false consciousness” proves too much: no one can ever establish that their preferences are correct and emanating from their real essence untainted by contamination. To let my Szasz flag fly, it is sometimes said that the actions of a person with mental illness are not the “real them”, but the only thing to distinguish the real and ill person is that the commentator does not approve of the actions of the latter. Galbraith & Hayek once argued over advertising. Galbraith claimed that it merely created wants which were not authentic to the individual. Hayek responded that for a social creature like man all of our preferences other than the most basic and rooted in biology (like hunger being unpleasant, though preferences in food are still cultural) are influenced by others. The complaint about marketing & consumerism is similar to that about “religion, traditional family relations, established ideas and ways of living”. It signals that one is a nonconformist trend-setter rather than follower. I endorse an extremely “thin” conception of libertarianism. I regard others lives as none of my business provided they don’t harm me. If you want remain in the small town you were born in and go to church to recite Latin you can’t understand with your wife that your extended family picked out for you, that’s fine by me. If you want to found a Seastead on which you make astral voyages to receive Satanic enlightenment through large quantities of drug use and orgies with surgically altered fellow travelers, that’s fine by me as well. To prefer one over the other requires some conception of the good which I don’t think is possible to arrive at objectively and don’t want politics to be concerned with.

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14 Responses to “Overcoming Bias comment”

No one has yet mentioned the idea that laws that prevent you from doing something leave you more free than laws that require you to do things. Communism will eventually have to require people to work etc. a conservative wants to forbid x and y but lets you do what you want. Conservatives forbid theft, Democrats force you to do charity to accept homosexuality etc. republicans want to forbid much democrats want to control your whole life (down to getting you drink less soda).

BTW conservatives believe that in a libertarian world a more conservative life will be more successful.

No one has yet mentioned the idea that laws that prevent you from doing something leave you more free than laws that require you to do things.
Curator/Sister Y discussed that idea here when someone said people may be harmed by the choice of suicide because it prevents them from not choosing. Thomas Schelling’s game-theory does indeed say that we can benefit by removing options, as it gives credible commitment. It is for that reason I reject the Stirnerite fallacy, despite being a Stirnerite.

a conservative wants to forbid x and y but lets you do what you want.
Unless what you want is x or y!

Conservatives forbid theft
To be fair to liberals, they prohibit it for us hoi-polloi without badges.

BTW conservatives believe that in a libertarian world a more conservative life will be more successful.
Not necessarily. A person who produces smut and then writes a largely fabulated but popular autobiography (or has someone more talented ghost-write it) has not lived virtuously as conservatives would have it. William Ayers had done alright for himself.

If you want remain in the small town you were born in and go to church to recite Latin you can’t understand with your wife that your extended family picked out for you, that’s fine by me. If you want to found a Seastead on which you make astral voyages to receive Satanic enlightenment through large quantities of drug use and orgies with surgically altered fellow travelers, that’s fine by me as well.

The interesting question, I think, is how much a group must be required to permit advertising/recruitment from other groups (at least to its children). It’s fine to choose to hang out in purdah with your female cousins, but if you don’t realize that the Seastead drug orgy is a possibility, I have less faith that it’s a genuine choice.

The Amish seem to be down with this with the rumspringa thing, but on the whole, it seems most groups would have an incentive to Great-Firewall-of-China out competing societies’ recruitment efforts, absent government force.

It all comes back to the problem of children, I suppose: parents’ interests in controlling their children in conflict with children’s liberty interests.

I don’t know about libertarianism as such, but I think Rothbardian ethics is most compatible with antinatalism. Read Rothbard’s tortured discussion of “Children and Rights” and the unexamined implication is palpable:

That thread was comically tragic. Or tragically comic. I really don’t know.

A bunch of sophists trying to justify their political stance by appealing to vague academic authorities? How far from political reality would one have to be to think that these kinds of arguments matter to even the most marginal degree?

Let’s be pragmatic here. “Liberaltarian”: there is no conservative equivalent. Why would a libertarian identify with the party of big, intrusive government? Simple answer: in order to nail liberal chicks. The “liberaltarian” position is easy to define – I love freedom except when professing my love for said freedom might conflict with the liberal viewpoint I must espouse to maintain interest from liberal sluts. Libertarians who largely support paleoconservative policies need no such label. It’s implied.

Does anyone believe that the “average” voter (99% of voters) gives any thought to the historical ramifications of their position? Do these voters know or care how a few obscure academics define the terms of political discourse? What good is a conversation about political epistemology if the people able to participate in that conversation are an inconsequentially small segment of the voting public?

The major media players in the political sphere today do not engage in such futile intellectual endeavors. They just tell the idiots what to think. The only relevant conversation for intellectuals is about which message will most strongly persuade the idiots to unwittingly vote for the desired measures.

Why would a libertarian identify with the party of big, intrusive government?
Many libertarians (including myself) think that describes both parties. The rest of them identify with the GOP. Will Wilkinson says he’s not interested in party-politics at all, just ideas. I think he likes hanging out with a certain crowd of people and doesn’t want to be associated with uncouth Ron Paul types.

Simple answer: in order to nail liberal chicks
Wilkinson was already dating one of those rare creatures, the libertarian female. They are currently engaged. The guy who coined the term “liberaltarian” is Brink Lindsey, who I believe was already married with children. I believe the same is true of other participants at the conference, such as Robin Hanson and Bruce Bartlett. Because women tend to be more religious than men, adopting the cosmo antipathy for religion would not help your chances. However, most of the religious ones wouldn’t think much of libertarianism.